Meet Emilia A’ Bell – Chief Revenue Officer, Platform9
With extensive experience in Go-to-Market, Emilia has led teams with SaaS and on-premise solutions for some of the most respected enterprise organizations such as SAP, Nokia, and Oracle. She will be responsible for developing an effective GTM strategy and building a world-class team to deliver scalable growth.
Taking Platform9’s game-changing solution to the next level will be her focus as she directs the solutions architects, customer success, field sales, inside sales development, and alliances teams.
1. What do you love the most about Platform9?
The amazing global customers we have, exciting products we create and the incredible teams who orchestrate everything to perfection.
Platform9 is simply a better way to go cloud-native and our offering makes that happen with our always-on assurance approach.
Everyone here is exceptionally passionate and talented. I enjoy the confidence of being able to deliver an extremely rich, relevant, and quite frankly a game-changing platform right here and right now to our customers.
2. With decades of experience leading global teams, how do you see sales transitioning from then to now?
Over decades, we have seen many evolutions in Sales philosophies. The best teams use many aspects to excel, including their ability to build trusted relationships, invest time in understanding their customer, and master how to position the solutions they represent. They have strong discipline for running their business and sales cycles, exhibit entrepreneurial creativity, and permeate strong values. None of this has changed. What constantly evolves is the technology that enterprises and sales teams have at their disposal and are required to master. Today, it’s a data-driven world, and technology is helping us reduce the time to develop the best GTM strategy based on industry insights.
“There are many aspects to ensuring that top-line growth increases in the short and long term, so keeping all the factors in clear sight, as well as prioritizing any necessary course corrections requires a finger on the pulse approach.”
3. What is the most challenging aspect of the job for you as a CRO?
I see my team as the spokes of the wheel; all must work in perfect coordination. My focus has been to build the right senior leadership team and org structure, a team of people that I consider to be smarter than me in specific functions. I have that now because of a combination of Platform9 tenured individuals as well as external expert hires. Knowing that I can trust my senior leadership team with thought leadership and attention to detail for their specific functions, I can now turn my attention to our customers and prospects to ensure that they are getting world class engagement from each member of my team and the extended team. There are many aspects to ensuring that top-line growth increases in the short and long term, so keeping all the factors in clear sight, as well as prioritizing any necessary course corrections requires a finger on the pulse approach.
4. What is your leadership style?
Collaborative, visionary, transformational. I believe in equipping, enabling and empowering my team to rise to the highest potential possible. I apply the same standards I measure myself with to my team.
5. What are the top three things we must do to inject velocity in the sales process?
A sense of urgency, attention to detail, curiosity about customer’s business and a desire and capability to be part of the solution.
6. How will you prepare your team for selling in the new age of digital B2B buying?
There is nothing that can replace relationships with customers and prospects. However, the ability to understand the customer, their environment, their challenges and their buying intentions are much more readily available. With such knowledge available, the ability to target and message to specific market niches, ideal customer profiles and personas is enhanced. Additionally, the ability to enhance the skills of the selling team can be enhanced by highly targeted sales enablement programs.
7. How has enterprise selling evolved over the recent years?
Many different sales formulas and philosophies have been developed and evolved over time. I believe some of the best enterprise selling comes from a combination of passion, relationship, discipline and value creation. None of them are perfect because people are so unique, and the challenges to be solved are also unique.
8. Women in sales – what advice would you give to the young aspirants?
Be the best version of yourself and don’t try to impress anyone. Do what you do because you find purpose and meaning in what you do, because it gives expression to your being. You will have challenges no matter what gender, skin color, education background etc. you have, so don’t allow yourself to be victimized by these differences. Surround yourself with a network of people whom you can enrich yourself with encouragement and support. Most importantly, love what you do, and the rest will follow.
9. A bit about you outside your work life.
Outside of work you will find me outside! As a family we love being outdoors, especially in and around water and mountains. Our most recent favorite past-time is boating on the Rideau River. We especially love the ocean and take any opportunity to swim and surf.
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